Inquest (23 page)

Milo takes his
hands off the door and turns back around. Turmoil flashes in his
eyes. He wants to go after Lance. He’s been itching to put his fist
through his teeth for months now. Maybe Lance would deserve it. I’m
not sure anymore. But Milo would get suspended. I don’t want him
getting in trouble because of me. Walking over to him, I reach my
hands up to his jacket and attempt to slide it back off. His hands
catch mine and hold them.

“Please don’t
go, Milo. I’m sorry I even brought Lance up. Just stay, okay?” I
ask. This night has not gone like I was hoping it would at all.

I don’t know
if it’s my plea, or the fact that my hands are still on his chest,
but Milo finally relents. “Are you going to tell me about the
curls?” Milo asks.

“Are you going
to stay?”

“For a little
while,” he says, his expression morphing into something lighter,
“but only if you go change. You look way too good in that dress for
me to focus on your story. It’s distracting.”

I reach up and
touch his cropped hair. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

“Go change,”
he demands, though his hands have slipped down to my hips.

“Okay, okay,”
I say. “Be right back.”

I hurry
through putting on my pajamas and brushing my teeth, only taking my
time when it comes to hanging my dress back up. When I emerge from
the bathroom Milo is lying on the bed with his eyes closed. I
seriously doubt he is sleeping. His suit coat is draped over the
sling chair, and his cuffs are rolled up with the top two buttons
of his shirt unbuttoned. The small triangle of bare chest is a
tantalizing peek at the muscles Celia promised were there.

I can’t resist
running my finger along his exposed skin. He jumps and his eyes pop
open in surprise. “I think you should have to change, too,” I
say.

Milo grabs my
hand and pulls me onto the bed next to him. “I don’t have any
clothes here.”

“Maybe you
should keep a spare sweatshirt here. But not the grey one, it’s
seriously ugly.”

Laughing, Milo
says, “You've wanted to say that for a while, haven’t you?”

“Since the
first time I saw it.”

He chuckles
and slips his arm under my head. “Well, you’ll be happy to know
that the grey sweatshirt is no more. The suit wasn’t the only thing
I bought. I’ve decided to give up trying to be invisible, no matter
what it costs me. I don’t think I could pull it off much longer
being your friend anyway. You seem to attract attention for some
reason. I can’t imagine why.”

“You realize
that means your parents might find out about me, right?”

The silence
seems heavy without his voice. “We’ll deal with that when we have
to,” Milo says. “But for right now, you owe me an explanation. Tell
me about the curls.”

I used the
first thing I could think of to get him to stop earlier. Now that
I’m actually faced with telling him the truth, I can’t seem to get
the words to escape my quickly constricting throat. He doesn’t
pressure me. My eyes start to burn with unshed tears, pain I have
held in for years trying to burst free of me. Milo’s breathing has
slowed to the point that I think he might be asleep before I’m
finally in control enough to speak.

Maybe I have
dodged this conversation for now. Milo squeezes my shoulder, and
says, “So?”

I sigh, but
keep my promise.

“My dad had
really curly hair. I loved it. I don’t know how many times I wished
mine was like his instead of my mom’s stick-straight hair. I kept
thinking it would happen, but my mom finally told me when I was
five that my hair was never going to be curly. I begged her to take
me to the salon to get it permed, but she said no. She was too
busy, I guess. My dad wasn’t.”

I have to
pause to sniff and wipe away the tears that have snuck past my
control. My dad was never too busy for me. No matter what he was
doing, he would put it down if I needed him. He would have done
anything for me.

“He bought me
a package of pink sponge curlers, and every night after my bath he
would roll them into my hair while we talked about what we’d done
that day. It was my most favorite part of the day. Even when I got
old enough to put the curlers in myself, he still insisted on
helping me. He curled my hair every night from the time I was five
until he died.”

Milo turns
onto his side, and I curl against his chest. The breath I feel like
I have been holding for five years finally slips out of my body. I
choke back another round of tears when Milo starts stroking my
hair, twirling the curls around his fingers just like my dad used
to do.

“So, you never
curled your hair even once after your dad died?” Milo asks.

“Not until
tonight.”

“But wouldn’t
curling your hair have reminded you of him, maybe made it feel like
he was still with you?” he asks.

My breathing
starts coming faster. “I…I didn’t want to be reminded of him.”

“Why not? You
two were obviously really close. Why would you want to just shut
him out like that?”

“It was too
painful to be reminded of him, Milo. You have no idea how much it
hurt,” I say.

Milo frowns.
He’s trying to understand, but I just don’t think he can. “If I
ever lost Celia, I couldn’t put her away like that, pretend she
never existed. I would want to keep her alive in my heart and
mind.”

“I couldn’t
th-think about h-him.” Sobbing hiccups break up my words as
memories break my heart. “N-not after wh-what I did to him.”

Pressing his
forehead against mine, Milo tries to comfort me. “What did you do,
Libby? It couldn’t be anything that bad.”

“I…I killed
him.”

Chapter 19

Holding
Back

“I…uh, you
what?” Milo asks.

“I killed him.
I killed my dad,” I whisper into his shirt. His entire body has
turned to marble, hard and alien. What have I done? Please don’t
let go of me, I beg silently. If Milo leaves I will truly be alone.
I can’t do this without him. I don’t
want
to do this without
him. Milo is the only reason I don’t go back to Mr. Walters and
take him up on his offer. What good is an extra two years if I have
to spend it completely alone? Please don’t leave me. Please don’t
leave me.

Suddenly his
hands start rubbing slow circles on my back again. He leans into me
and presses his cheek against mine. I can’t breathe because I’m
afraid I’m imagining this. Milo can’t possibly want to stay with me
now.

“What
happened?” Milo asks. “I don’t believe you meant to hurt him. You
wouldn’t do that.”

He is probably
the only person in this world who actually believes that. Even with
Celia, I think she’s secretly afraid of what I’ll do. The single
fact that I make her brother happy is just more powerful of an idea
to her. I just wish I knew whether Milo was right.

“I don’t
really know what happened,” I admit. “I was my birthday. We’d spent
the day at the amusement park with my friends. Then everyone came
back to my house for cake and ice cream. I was so exhausted that
night that I fell asleep on the couch and my dad had to carry me up
to bed.”

It was the
last time he held me in his arms and I wasn’t even awake to savor
it.

“What happened
after he took you to bed?” Milo asks. His rough voice betrays dark
thoughts and I shake my head quickly.

“He didn’t
hurt me, Milo. My dad would never have hurt me,” I say.

“Then
what?”

“I remember
being asleep, which is kind of strange, I guess. I thought I was
dreaming at first, but then I realized it wasn’t a normal dream. It
was different, real, if that makes sense. Someone was calling my
name, screaming at me to wake up. Then there were even more people.
They were all yelling, telling me to wake up over and over again.
It scared me to death. I didn’t know what was going on, but I had
learned how to wake myself up from bad dreams years before. I
focused all my thoughts on my real body and starting counting.
Before I got to ten, the dream started disappearing. I realized
something was wrong right away.”

“What do you
mean
wrong
?” Milo asks.

“I don’t know.
It was just wrong.” The sensations of that night return like they
do every time I think about it. “The air was pressing in on me,
suffocating me. I felt nothing, no emotions, no presence of other
people like I usually did, no connection with the natural world
around me. All I could feel was pain. My strength was being sapped
from my body to the point that I could barely even force my eyes
open. When I did get them open, all I could see was my dad’s
outline against the window. I don’t know what he was doing, but the
pain was so horrible it physically shocked my body.”

“What did you
do?”

My chest
shakes involuntarily. The terror of that night sneaks back into my
heart. “I don’t know,” I whisper. “I was so scared. I tried to tell
him to stop, but I’m not sure I even spoke. I could barely even
move. It hurt so bad to move, but I forced myself to reach for his
hand. The moment I touched him, everything went away. I was so
relieved I didn’t even hear him screaming at first. When I finally
registered it, his face was so white. His whole body was shaking. I
tore my hand away from him immediately, but I was too late. He
slumped to the ground and he never got up again.”

I dry my face
and try to finish with what little dignity I can muster. “By the
time my mom ran into my room, there was nothing anyone could do to
save him. She saw him on the floor and started crying. Our butler,
Manuel, was the one who called the paramedics. I knew my dad was
already gone, though. I felt his life leave his body as he fell
still. I don’t know what I did to him, but it’s my fault he’s dead.
I killed him, Milo.”

Milo buries me
in his arms. “You don’t know that, Libby. It could have been
something he did himself. He was obviously doing something to you
when you woke up. Maybe it turned back on him.”

“But he wasn’t
trying to hurt me, Milo.”

“You don’t
know what he was doing. Maybe he didn’t mean to hurt you, but
whatever it was, it definitely hurt him.” I start to object, but
Milo talks right over me. “You waking up interrupted what he was
doing. It could be that whatever he was in the middle of wasn’t
supposed to be interrupted. But even if that’s true, it wasn’t your
fault.”

“If I would
have just stayed still until he finished…”

“No,” Milo
says, “who knows what might have happened to you. Those people in
your dream, they knew something was wrong. I think something bad
would have happened to you if you didn’t stop your dad. I can’t
explain it, I don’t have Spiritualism to give me any otherworldly
insight, but I know I’m right about this.”

My chin
quivers. I will defend my dad to the end because I loved him more
than anything in this world, but regardless of my arguments I know
what I felt that night. The terror in my dream was so overwhelming.
The people were so filled with it all they could do was scream at
me, but they knew something more. They knew there would be
tremendous suffering if I didn’t wake up and stop my dad.

“He couldn’t
have known what he was doing was going to hurt me,” I say quietly.
I have to believe that. If my faith in my dad is taken away from
me…I just can’t handle that. He was all I had for so long. “He
didn’t know.”

“I’m sure he
didn’t,” Milo says, almost like he believes it.

“But what was
he doing?” I ask. I’m not really expecting a response, but Milo
surprises me completely by pulling me off the bed with him. He
tosses me my lavender hoodie and tugs his suit coat back on. I hold
the hoodie in front of me without moving.

Milo turns
back to me, and says, “Well, put it on. It’s snowing outside.”

It seems to be
a re-emergence of that bossy commanding Milo I met after Celia and
I were attacked at the mall. I didn’t like being told what to do
then, and I don’t like it much now. “Are we going somewhere? It’s
the middle of the night.”

Taking the
sweatshirt out of my hands Milo drapes it over my head and pulls it
down until my curls bounce through the top, followed by the rest of
my face. I push my arms through the sleeves with growing
irritation. “Milo, I’m not going anywhere in the snow. It’s too
late.”

“He won’t
care,” Milo says. “He said we could visit at any time as long as it
had something to do with you being the Destroyer.”

“He who? Mr.
Walters? Milo, you can’t be serious. I do not want to go to Mr.
Walters’ house tonight.” I don’t want to go anywhere right now, but
I especially don’t want to spend the rest of my night sitting
around at one of my teachers’ houses.

“Can you think
of anyone else who might know what your dad was doing?” he
asks.

“Well, no, but
why can’t we talk to him tomorrow?” I ask. I’ll admit that Milo is
probably right about Mr. Walters being able to help me. That scares
me to death. I’m not sure I want to know what really happened. What
if Milo is right? What if my dad was trying to hurt me? I don’t
want to admit that to Milo, though, so I dig up another reason.
“I’m tired, Milo. Why don’t we go see him in the morning? We should
be going to bed, not traipsing off to Mr. Walters’ house.”

Milo’s hands
slow in their work of pulling my hair out from my hoodie.
“
We
should be going to bed?” The glint in his eyes is
horrible.

I just glare
at him. “Why can’t we do this tomorrow?”

“Because he’s
leaving tomorrow morning, remember? His sister’s in the hospital.
That’s why you don’t have to go to his class all next week.”

It’s been a
long week. By Friday, I don’t know that I caught much of anything
any of my teachers said to me. Faking my way through every class,
getting to know Celia, training with Milo, dreading going to the
dance, it was a lot to deal with. Paying attention to lectures kind
of fell by the wayside at some point. I vaguely remember hearing
Mr. Walters say something about his sister. Waiting until tomorrow
to ask him would have been fine by me—I need at least that long to
prepare myself for the worst—but waiting a whole week? I can’t do
it. Not if he really has some kind of answer for me. Five years.
That is long enough.